Soldsie Could Solve Facebook's Biggest Challenge

San Francisco-based startup Soldsie started as a way for local
businesses to represent themselves online, like a homepage
builder for storefronts.

When that proved a hard sell, the company switched towards
figuring out how to help people sell things on Facebook.

"We were walking into businesses throughout [Silicon] Valley and
noticed that someone would always be on Facebook," said founder
Chris Bennett. "When we asked if they were interested in selling
on Facebook, their eyes would light up."

Commerce on Facebook has proved to be a surprisingly big
challenge. Facebook itself abandoned an earlier feature that let
businesses run storefronts on their Facebook pages, and only
recently dived back into e-commerce by letting people buy friends
gifts on their birthday.

For Soldsie customers, it's a straightforward process–you post
the item on Facebook with a picture, description, and price.
Whoever comments with the word "sold" buys the item. The entire
process is managed through a backend dashboard that pulls in all
the comments and lets you send invoices to buyers.

If you sell more than $700 worth of stuff in a month, Soldsie
keeps 3%. If you sell less than that, the company's services are
free.

The process is very manual right now. When we asked about a way
to automate it, Bennett said, "We can't talk yet but we've got
interesting things coming soon."

How about a cute story about the first item they sold?

When Soldsie was testing the site, it posted a photo of a Giants
hat for sale. A friend "liked" the post, merely as a means to
show his support (he was actually a Phillies fan). His mom saw
the "like" and bought him the hat, which Soldsie didn't actually
have—they were just testing their product and refunded her money.

Undeterred, the friend's mother bought it from another store and
gave it to him anyway.